“A deep-read man, that can with charms and herbs
Restore you to your reason.”[162:1]
But from the general character of the play it is easy to see that he is not considered insane.
Here, then, we have an attempt made to subject an outrageous and unnatural passion, the manifestations of which bear at times the closest resemblance to mania, to the dramatic treatment of tragedy. That Massinger has wholly succeeded, few would be rash enough to assert. He has given us a grim and ghastly picture, full of brute strength but wanting in that higher power which restrains and subdues. He has created a character at times human, always terrible, but only partially effective in the highest sense of the word.
It is probable that if Constance and Malefort had been portrayed as mad and not merely as possessed by an overpowering passion, the result in each case would have been a considerable dramatic gain. The death of the Lady Constance “in a frenzy”—like the deaths of Lady Macbeth and the Queen in “Cymbeline”—is only reported
by a messenger. Had that frenzy actually been depicted, the result would have been a weakening of the whole plot, but a decided increase in the effectiveness of Constance. In the two plays which we shall now consider, a comparatively poor theme is treated in such a way that the passion portrayed is heightened,—without being raised, however, to the level of madness. It is interesting to speculate on the result had this been done—whether the madness would have elevated the drama or whether the paucity or the inconsequence of the theme would have debased the presentation of insanity.
Grimaldi, the remorse-stricken renegade of Massinger’s play “The Renegado,” who first immures a young girl, and afterwards repents, is reduced in the fourth act to a state approaching insanity. He is a poor sort of creature, at any rate until the concluding portion of the play, where he contrives a remarkable stratagem which brings about the dénouement. His remorse bears many of the signs of madness, and indeed may have been intended for such by the author. For days he has taken no food; the mention of the words “church” and “high altar” increases his melancholy; his speech ends ever with “those dreadful words damnation and despair.”[163:1] His “ravings” lead him to contemplate all kinds of extravagances; he would do a
“bloody justice” on himself, pull out his eyes, lop off his legs, and give his body to those whom he has injured. He does none of these things, however,—a Jesuit priest, habited like a Bishop, curing him by the very simple means of granting him absolution. The wild ravings give place to calmer expressions of contrition and he goes off with a riming couplet! It is unnecessary to follow him; one only wishes that the extreme nature of his remorse had not made it advisable for us to include such a creature, for whom little can be felt but contempt.
Our last example is Memnon, in Fletcher’s play, “The Mad Lover.” Here is a character for whom we cannot help entertaining some regard, but we are at a loss to know what exactly to make of him. If he is really mad, as seems at first sight unlikely, it is a very unreal kind of madness, with more dramatic purpose than realism. One of the characters, indeed, calls him “stupid mad,” and the term is not an inapt one. We should be inclined to group him with the pretenders, but for three considerations. Firstly, he never declares nor even hints to anyone that he is not what he seems, as Hamlet does to Horatio and as Memnon himself might with perfect ease have done—for example, to Siphax. Then his recovery, however sudden, complete and unreal, is only the sort of thing one would expect from Fletcher, and may be
left out of the question. Lastly, in the scene where he refuses the whore, it is true that he shews considerable sagacity and discrimination. Nevertheless it is no more than has actually been found in “cases” arising from the same cause as Memnon’s. Yet obviously, as we shall see, the mad lover is not mad in the acceptation of the word then common, and the hypothesis of an abnormal passion will meet the case, better perhaps than if we consider our hero either mad or sane.